---
title: 'web-sys'
description: 'The web-sys crate provides bindings for Web APIs.'
---

import Tabs from '@theme/Tabs'
import TabItem from '@theme/TabItem'

The [`web-sys` crate](https://crates.io/crates/web-sys) provides bindings for Web APIs. This is
procedurally generated from browser WebIDL which is why some names are so long and why some types are vague.

## Features in `web-sys`

The `web-sys` crate with all of its features enabled can add lots of bloat to a Wasm application.
To get around this issue most types are feature gated so that you only include the types
you require for your application. Yew enables several features from `web-sys` and
exposes some types in its public API. You will often need to add `web-sys` as a dependency yourself.

## Inheritance in `web-sys`

In the [Simulating inheritance section](./wasm-bindgen.mdx#simulating-inheritance) you can read how in
general Rust provides an approach to simulate inheritance in JavaScript. This is very important in
`web-sys` as understanding what methods are available on a type means understanding its inheritance.

This section is going to look at a specific element and list out its inheritance using Rust by
calling [`Deref::deref`](https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/ops/trait.Deref.html#tymethod.deref) until
the value is [`JsValue`](./wasm-bindgen.mdx#jsvalue):

```rust
use std::ops::Deref;
use web_sys::{
    Element,
    EventTarget,
    HtmlElement,
    HtmlTextAreaElement,
    Node,
};

fn inheritance_of_text_area(text_area: HtmlTextAreaElement) {
    // HtmlTextAreaElement is <textarea> in html.
    let html_element: &HtmlElement = text_area.deref();

    let element: &Element = html_element.deref();

    let node: &Node = element.deref();

    let event_target: &EventTarget = node.deref();

    // Notice we have moved from web-sys types now into built-in
    // JavaScript types which are in the js-sys crate.
    let object: &js_sys::Object = event_target.deref();

    // Notice we have moved from js-sys type to the root JsValue from
    // the wasm-bindgen crate.
    let js_value: &wasm_bindgen::JsValue = object.deref();

    // Using deref like this means we have to manually traverse
    // the inheritance tree, however, you can call JsValue methods
    // on the HtmlTextAreaElement type.
    // The `is_string` method comes from JsValue.
    assert!(!text_area.is_string());

    // empty function just to prove we can pass HtmlTextAreaElement as a
    // &EventTarget.
    fn this_function_only_takes_event_targets(targets: &EventTarget) {};

    // The compiler will walk down the deref chain in order to match the types here.
    this_function_only_takes_event_targets(&text_area);

    // The AsRef implementations allow you to treat the HtmlTextAreaElement
    // as an &EventTarget.
    let event_target: &EventTarget = text_area.as_ref();

}
```

_[Inheritance in `web-sys` in The `wasm-bindgen` Guide](https://wasm-bindgen.github.io/wasm-bindgen/web-sys/inheritance.html)._

## The `Node` in `NodeRef`

Yew uses a [`NodeRef`](concepts/function-components/node-refs.mdx) to provide a way for keeping a reference to
a `Node` made by the [`html!`](concepts/html/introduction.mdx) macro. The `Node` part of `NodeRef` is referring to
[`web_sys::Node`](https://wasm-bindgen.github.io/wasm-bindgen/api/web_sys/struct.Node.html). The
`NodeRef::get` method will return a `Option<Node>` value, however, most of the time in Yew you want
to cast this value to a specific element so you can use its specific methods. This casting
can be done using [`JsCast`](./wasm-bindgen.mdx#JsCast) on the `Node` value, if present, but Yew
provides the `NodeRef::cast` method to perform this casting for convenience and so that you do not
necessarily have to include the `wasm-bindgen` dependency for the `JsCast` trait.

The two code blocks below do essentially the same thing, the first is using `NodeRef::cast` and
the second is using [`JsCast::dyn_into`](https://wasm-bindgen.github.io/wasm-bindgen/api/wasm_bindgen/trait.JsCast.html#method.dyn_into)
on the `web_sys::Node` returned from `NodeRef::get`.

<Tabs>
  <TabItem value="Using NodeRef::cast" label="Using NodeRef::cast">

```rust
use web_sys::HtmlInputElement;
use yew::NodeRef;

fn with_node_ref_cast(node_ref: NodeRef) {
    if let Some(input) = node_ref.cast::<HtmlInputElement>() {
        // do something with HtmlInputElement
    }
}
```

  </TabItem>
  <TabItem value="Using NodeRef::get" label="Using NodeRef::get">

```rust
use wasm_bindgen::JsCast;
use web_sys::HtmlInputElement;
use yew::NodeRef;

fn with_jscast(node_ref: NodeRef) {
    if let Some(input) = node_ref
        .get()
        .and_then(|node| node.dyn_into::<HtmlInputElement>().ok()) {
        // do something with HtmlInputElement
    }
}
```

  </TabItem>
</Tabs>

## JavaScript example to Rust

This section demonstrates examples of how JavaScript code which interact with the
Web APIs can be rewritten with `web-sys` in Rust.

### JavaScript example

```js
document.getElementById('mousemoveme').onmousemove = (e) => {
    // e = Mouse event.
    var rect = e.target.getBoundingClientRect()
    var x = e.clientX - rect.left //x position within the element.
    var y = e.clientY - rect.top //y position within the element.
    console.log('Left? : ' + x + ' ; Top? : ' + y + '.')
}
```

### `web-sys` example

Using `web-sys` alone the above JavaScript example could be implemented like this:

```toml title=Cargo.toml
[dependencies]
wasm-bindgen = "0.2"

[dependencies.web-sys]
version = "0.3"
# We need to enable all the web-sys features we want to use!
features = [
    "console",
    "Document",
    "HtmlElement",
    "MouseEvent",
    "DomRect",
]
```

```rust ,no_run
use wasm_bindgen::{prelude::Closure, JsCast};
use web_sys::{console, Document, HtmlElement, MouseEvent};

let mousemove = Closure::<dyn Fn(MouseEvent)>::wrap(Box::new(|e| {
    let rect = e
        .target()
        .expect("mouse event doesn't have a target")
        .dyn_into::<HtmlElement>()
        .expect("event target should be of type HtmlElement")
        .get_bounding_client_rect();
    let x = (e.client_x() as f64) - rect.left();
    let y = (e.client_y() as f64) - rect.top();
    console::log_1(&format!("Left? : {} ; Top? : {}", x, y).into());
}));

Document::new()
    .expect("global document not set")
    .get_element_by_id("mousemoveme")
    .expect("element with id `mousemoveme` not present")
    .unchecked_into::<HtmlElement>()
    .set_onmousemove(mousemove.as_ref().dyn_ref());

// we now need to save the `mousemove` Closure so that when
// this event fires the closure is still in memory.
```

This version is much more verbose, but you will probably notice part of that is because of failure
types reminding us that some of these function calls have invariants that must be held, or otherwise will
cause a panic in Rust. Another part of the verbosity is the calls to `JsCast` to cast into
different types so that you can call its specific methods.

### Yew example

In Yew you will mostly be creating [`Callback`](concepts/function-components/callbacks.mdx)s to use in the
[`html!`](concepts/html/introduction.mdx) macro so the example is going to use this approach instead of completely copying
the approach above:

```toml title=Cargo.toml
[dependencies.web-sys]
version = "0.3"
# We need to enable the `DomRect` feature to use the
# `get_bounding_client_rect` method.
features = [
    "console",
    "HtmlElement",
    "MouseEvent",
    "DomRect",
]

```

```rust
use web_sys::{console, HtmlElement, MouseEvent};
use yew::{
    html,
    Callback, TargetCast,
};

let onmousemove = Callback::from(|e: MouseEvent| {
    if let Some(target) = e.target_dyn_into::<HtmlElement>() {
        let rect = target.get_bounding_client_rect();
        let x = (e.client_x() as f64) - rect.left();
        let y = (e.client_y() as f64) - rect.top();
        console::log_1(&format!("Left? : {} ; Top? : {}", x, y).into());
    }
});

html! {
    <div id="mousemoveme" {onmousemove}></div>
};
```

## External libraries

`web-sys` is a raw binding to the Web API so it comes with some pain in Rust because it was not
designed with Rust or even a strong type system in mind, this is where community crates
provide abstractions over `web-sys` to provide more idiomatic Rust APIs.

_[External libraries page](/community/external-libs)_
